An old Ovich quote...its very true.

Im a bigamist. Im married to FoW,40k,Fantasy,Victory at sea,boardgames,my wife and I cheat on all of them with Eric.

I see a lot of nervous laughter here, that's right, if you get divorced, you are screwed.

You wife will keep the house, get the best car, a lot your cash and she will try too poison your relationship with your kids.

You will be financially wipe out and it take you years to recover.

I have avoided that because I have taken the time to investigate marriage and relationships between men and women. I know most women's game plan and can see through their manipulations.

I dated one girl who told me her marriage was over after two years, and yet she stay with him for another 3, cheated on him the whole 3 years. And after fucking a bunch of guys while married she eventually dump him when she found somebody better (according to her). Poor bastard thought everything was alright. He never saw it coming. Just one example of many.

And yes I was one the guys she cheated with. She told me she was seperated and was going through divorce proceedings. I finally saw through her lies.

JerryB

You home wrecker.

Come on Jerry, I deal with broken marriages everyday. And in a lot of the cases, the man got what he deserved because he couldn't keep it in his pants. True or not Bill??

We live in a society where there are specific gender roles and unwritten rules on what is expected of men and women from a sociocultural, cognitive, and emotional perspective.

Women are encouraged to value communication, expression of emotion, and the building of relationships.

Men are primarily raised to value independence, emotional fortitude, professional success, and competitiveness.

These are common themes and are not always encouraged in every family, but are seen in many families throughout the world, not just the U.S. In some cultures they are exaggerated and in some they are less emphasized.

It is quite common for a man and a women to look at spending the same amount of time together as being either too intimate (suffocating) , or not intimate enough (distanced), respectively.

So Bill, when you and I look at spending some away time from our wives to play our games, we look at it as a completely logical and in fact essential break in relational intimacy, in order to not feel suffocated, frustrated, etc. It's not that it has to be more fun than spending time with our wives, (because our wives can still be fun), it's that we are taking a break from the intimacy that comes along with spending time alone with your partner. Throw in the kids, and that need for separation becomes even more intense because of the added responsibility and our own relational intimacy with each child and the family unit as a whole. .

Now our wives, and in fact many women see it completely differently. They look at the hum drum of regular life as a constant break in relational/emontional intimacy. That's why they always complain that you never spend any time together. "quality time" meaning, time focused on the family or the relationship, not just on talking about finances, or current events or other conversation, or simply being in one another presence.

What ends up happening is that you get a "pursuer/ distancer" pattern. Your wife "pursues" you by demanding your presence at home. But due to emotional suffocation, this, in fact causes you to want to be home less, "distancing" yourself. Since the woman will not allow this, you distance yourself emotionally instead. This in turn, makes the wife even more desperate for intimacy and makes her want to pursue even more, making the man want to distance even more... and so forth and so on. So after a few years of this, the man ends up feeling completely suffocated by his wife's emotional needs, and the wife ends up feeling completely dissatisfied with the emotionally bereft state of the relationship.

The key is to find balance. but when 2 people marry with vastly different emotional needs, the success rate for finding this balance is very low.
There has to be compromise, which is always easier said than done.

When I look at Erik, I see a family with clearly defined gender roles and expectations. Maybe this is due to his value system, or just well thought out expectations within the marriage. But it's clear that Christine is either A. Mostly happy with the balance of emotional intimacy in the relationship or B. Has decided to live within a specific gender role, in acceptance of pre-designated norms, ie, even if she's not completely satisfied with the arrangement, she has accepted living with it. Erik's marriage is actually more typical of the type of marriage that was standard in this country 50 years ago.

Anyway, sorry to get all technical, but I don't always get to talk about this kind of stuff with friends. I usually only get to talk about with.... couples.

Stephen, thank you very much, that was very enlightening. Please contribute more if you can.

Erik you just prove # 7 on page one, you have seen it first hand on nearly a daily bases.

JerryB

So don't get married, get fat, and lets game!

Bill and I commiserate alot .. right Bill. Because we both happen to be married to women who are strong willed, intelligent, yet quite emotionally driven. So from our point of view, their decisions are not made like ours, mostly on logical conclusions. They are based on mood and feeling, many times seeming quite illogical and downright irrational at the time.

For instance, my wife yelled at me this morning because I forgot to have my daughter brush her teeth while she was getting ready for school. She berated me in front of my daughter.

Now, knowing my wife, I know this was primarily based on the fact that she was stressed out, had a headache, and was without nicotine, which her body craves, for the whole night. If I talk about it with her now, she would probably say that she should not have yelled at me, and that she's concerned about our daughter's hygeiene, and that she feels overwhelmed because she feels like she's the only one that thinks about these things. She would probably apologize for dressing me down in front of our daughter.

Now the pattern of our relationship is stable because I hold my emotion in check, which is what men are supposed to do. Since anger is the most common emotion that men are allowed to show, it's more common for the husband to lash out back at his wife and have the argument escalate. If I was a little less even tempered, I probably would have yelled back at her, started a much more intense argument, and frightened our daughter, who would not have understood anything except the fact that because she did not brush her teeth, mommy and daddy were fighting.

Our frustration Bill, comes in the fact that we always must be even tempered in order to have stability in our relationships. Because if react to situations the way our wives do, the homeostasis will shatter, and we will likely head down the slippery road to divorce.

And let's face it, 50 % of time, that's what happens.

BTW , in my opinion, infidelity is 1 of 2 things or sometimes both.

1. a representation of the persons value system which is influenced by their cultural background and upbringing. Men do cheat alot, and it's not always because they are unhappy in their relationship.

2. A serious representation of the inadequacies in their current relationship that can only be resolved by meeting those needs elsewhere. This is more frequent with women, who seek to have emotional needs met through sexual intimacy with another man.

Anyway.. just my 2 cents.

That's deep bro - and scary accurate

Well, I should know a thing or two about this crap by now dammit, I've been working with couples for 10 years !

The hard part, as usual, is helping oneself.

I can't tell you how many Psychologists and therapists I've met who have been divorced multiple times. HA..!

No one knows all the answers... all we can do is take the patterns in human behavior that we see and alter what we can... but it's always a crap shoot with relationships.

Stephen, to me appears your wife is constantly searching for imperfections in you to give her an opportunity to prove she is always right (see # 3 on page one). Nevertheless thanks for being very candid. Very accurate on the infidelity. Men and women want the same things, with just different approaches.

Kyle, it is alright to get married. But remember, you do not have to get married.

I read a book by a women doctor (family/marriage blah,blah degree) that I thought, finally a book written by a women that can explain what's going through their heads. In the introduction she states "I really wish my significant other would read this book" (I discovered she had been divorce twice). I was pissed "bitch if you can't explain it to you man who sleeps with you, how can you explain it to me on the other side of the country who has never met you". She goes on "Look sometimes I can't explain why I do the things I do"*. Needless to the say the book was full of shit. Wasted $40, another cunt fools a dude, con-grates.

* I have seen this explanation before, there is a pattern here. I had in the past read two magazine interviews, one with Drew Barrymore, the other Lisa Maria Presely. Two separate magazines I want to stress. In both, the interviewers had a similar line of questions concerning their bizarre relationships (Drew=Tom Green, divorced, Lisa = Jakco, divorced) they kept asking the same question trying to pry a straight answers from the dim-wits, finally they both respond almost word for word "Look I just can't explain why I do certain things". Uh, like getting fucking married? See # 6 on page one.

Guys I am not pulling this stuff out of my ass. I don't claim to be an expert and I am no where near the level of Stephen (he has a degree, hopefully better then Dr. DumbBitch). But I think I am better informed then the average bear.

The simple answer is, just don't get married. Most men have to experience two divorces to finally get it.

JerryB

I wouldn't say don't get married as a general sweeping statement Jerry. I mean after all, there are successful marriages out there.

I would say spend some real time getting to know your partner before getting married.

Don't get married because of external pressures or poor rationalizations.. here's a laundry list.

1. I owe it to her, because I've been with her so long.
2. She's a good woman, I probably won't find someone better.
3. This girl is great, but if I don't marry her soon she'll leave me.
4. My family and her family are expecting us to get married so we should
5. We've been together for such a long timeI can't imagine my life without
her, so I might as well get married.
6. I'm at that stage in my life where I need to think about settling down
7. I don't want to break up with her, I love her, so I might as well marry
her
8. Oh shit! I got her pregnant.. now I have to marry her.

Getting married should be a decision made on a few really good reasons

1. I love and feel loved by this person, at least in terms of how I
understand love
2. This person accepts and respects me for who I am, and has not already
started to try and change me
3. I really like being around this person. This person stimulates me and
not just because of the sex
4. I can easily imagine myself with this person 50 years down the road
5. This person and I are friends and enjoy similar interests.
6. This person and I have similar beliefs in general and don't vary too
greatly in our lifestyles or habits
7. This person views family in a similar way that I do
8. This person will be able to put up with my farting and burping down the
road and still love me.

When they did a recent study with couples who friends and family deemed as successful, they found a powerful descriptive factor in most of these couples. They have seen and continue to see their partners through rosy colored glasses. In other words, they cherish those things they love about their partners and ignore those things they don't. But overall they see their partners as wonderful, unique, and worthy of respect.

jerryb wrote:
The simple answer is, just don't get married. Most men have to experience two divorces to finally get it.

Well if you plan on being a bachelor for the rest of your life and eventually you will get to the point that you are too old to get into any meaningful relationships. It would be ideal to just get with the girl you like and be happy together forever without marriage, but that is just not going to happen majority of a time. Most women will not accept such an arrangement, because of feeling of need for commitment, and pressure from family and friends. You can drag it out for a long time no doubt, but eventually they will want to go all the way and make it "official". Marriage on itself is a wonderful thing, nothing really wrong with it... it is the law that has ruined marriage with it's unfair practices.

Marriage to many is obviously a gamble, but the heart does what the heart wants and despite most men actually knowing the risks, they go in anyways and get married because they really are in love, and it's impossible to them that anything could ever go wrong.

But it all generally boils down to people not wanting to be alone for the rest of their lives. And really marriage is generally the only option that will get you a meaningful relationship that will last. To some people it is perfectly fine to be alone, to others it is much harder to imagine. No doubt many get into it out of that fear of being alone.

I would never say not to get married, simply people need to be more careful with it. Marriage is treated way to leisurely, one of my gaming buddies has been married 3 times already and going to do it again after proposing to a girl he knew for about 2 months. Geez I wonder why things don't work out for him, but anyways he is a person who obviously needs others around him at all times, being alone is not an acceptable option for him. Marriage is a wonderful thing to have but it's something you have to take care at. Nothing is better than actually living with a person for a good period of time before marriage. Just don't get married, live together and after perhaps a year or more if both are willing, and if that works out, then perhaps that marriage thing won't be so bad an idea. Like with anything you do, "research".

Marriage statistics to me are meaningless since so many people don't even properly do it. The whole idea of the most marriages failing is highly inflated due to idiots who rush into it, forced into it (condom broke), or who treat marriage as a duty that they have to take after so much time with another person. Almost every person I've known who has gotten a divorce had myself and others usually saying "it's not going to last". I've never known anyone actually who got divorced and I would go "geez, I never saw that coming". "Love" blinds people to what is plainly obvious to others.

Actually, you'd be surprised Kyle, there are a lot of couples that appear to be the perfect couple to friends and family , but then end up divorced anyway. No one really knows what goes on in a relationship sometimes, even close family members.

Statistics are only meaningful if the data is shown to be consistent over and over again. Otherwise it's just another research study that comes and goes with no real meaning. So I agree with you in general on that matter. Most of the research we hear about in the news or on yahoo is a single study that goes in one ear and out the other.

Bravo, Kyle and Stephen I agree with you. If only most everyone was aware of this, I think things would be dramatically different.

I have been researching the statistics also and the trend has been, divorce is up and marriage is down.

As matter of fact the last US Census recorded that for the first time in American history the number of single people outnumber the number of married people. If it continues at the current pace, then I want have to save anything, marriage will become a forgotten ceremony or rarely performed.

JerryB

You old people are still talking about this? TL;DR.

Leviticus wrote:You old people are still talking about this? TL;DR.

I'm not even 30 yet

Im 5 years deep into 30. Look in the end all I wanted was a little venting on female stupidity...some solidarity as men. Then we all felt that we needed to share how wonderful our marriages were. Not what I was getting at. Can we all agree women make no sense, can we agree our wives drive us up the wall? Ok then. Eric Im happy Christine has a great ass, but that wasnt my point. Being your one of my closest friends I see your wife as a cousin as far as that stuff goes. Women need no defending gentlemen.Im not saying marriage doesnt work, Im saying women take no accountability and are unreasonable in many instances. Are you guys on team vagina or with your fellow man. If your not interested in the topic or conversation simply dont read or engage in it.

Whoever said women make sense? Sooner make sense of the Warp.

Even Tzeentch is baffled by women.

And Larry King just divorced from his 7th Marriage.... lol

NurgleNick wrote:Whoever said women make sense? Sooner make sense of the Warp.

Even Tzeentch is baffled by women.

AMEN!!!

Yeah - but only his 6th wife because he married and devorced one woman twice.

The real question I have is why the fuck is this story news worthy?

In other news..... Tammy and Melissa Etheridge Call It Quits
WHO GIVES A FUCK?!?!?!?!?

Kyle wrote:And Larry King just divorced from his 7th Marriage.... lol

That just because he cant fuck. The man 100 years old. Younger woman wants to get f*cked. She wants that p*ssy and ass eaten. She wants to feel desired in a primal way. Larry cant even get his pecker hard without a viagra or two and if he tries to throw her on the bed on her stomach to eat that ass he'll just throw out his back and cause a hernia.

This thread is now about Larry King bedroom scenarios.

Discuss.